Matt Berninger announces debut solo album, shares title track 'Serpentine Prison'

Today (May 20), Matt Berninger – best known as the frontman of The National – has announced that his debut solo record Serpentine Prison will arrive on October 2nd, 2020. The album has been produced by  Booker T. Jones, and is slated for release on Book Records, a brand new imprint formed by the two musicians in cooperation with Concord Records.

The album promises to be heavily collaborative, and features contributions from Harrison Whitford, Gail Ann Dorsey, Andrew Bird and Hayden Desser, among many others.

The video for the title track, premiered today to celebrate the album announcement, was filmed and directed by Tom Berninger and Chris Sgroi in California.

“For a long time, I had been writing songs for movies and musicals and other projects where I needed to get inside someone else’s head and convey another person’s feelings," Berninger says about 'Serpentine Prison'.

"I liked doing that, but I was ready to dig back into my own garbage and this was the first thing that came out. The title is from a twisting sewer pipe that drains into the ocean near LAX. There’s a cage on the pipe to keep people from climbing out to sea. I worked on the song with Sean O’Brien and Harrison Whitford and recorded it about six months later with Booker T. Jones producing. It feels like an epilogue, so I named the record after it and put it last.”

Watch the video below.